Tools for life

drawing by lynn

If you ask yourself how often you have felt deep inner peace or harmony recently, it can call to mind those places, people and situations that promote that sense in you, and that can help you to seek them more.

When I developed the set of 16 questions in the DSES it was originally for the purpose of research and evaluation. More frequent Daily Spiritual Experiences have been shown to be connected to many good things in life in over 200 research studies. But asking the questions has also become a practical tool for people – helping to notice the presence of the transcendent in daily life. When I ask myself if I have found strength in my religion or spirituality, that reminds me that strength can be found there, and reminds me to look for it and draw on it.

I am presenting at a meeting at Harvard School of Public Health in a couple of weeks on how one might research the role of spirituality in large scale studies of health in diverse populations, seeing if and how it might influence gene expression. (Not all 16 questions speak to everyone, but the average of the set addresses the variety of ways we experience the spiritual, the transcendent, in our lives and provides a number score. They provide a wide variety of questions that address the depth and diversity of our spiritual experiences.) At Harvard I have been asked to present on my 16 questions, the DSES, as ones that might help in studying the relationship between spirituality and gene expression and health in diverse populations. One of the reasons the DSES questions are good for research is that they show statistical correlations with good things like relationships and well-being; and it is also then reasonably easy to enhance this aspect of spirituality, giving us a tool for enriching our lives in significant ways.